Siblings create app to help people caught in intimate partner violence
It's expected to be released in their home country of Bangladesh by 2024
Two siblings who study at Dalhousie University in Halifax hope to help survivors of intimate partner violence by designing an app that's disguised to look like the user is reading a recipe on their phone.
The app is called Mitro, which means friend in Bengali, and it's the creation of Anamika and Anik Ahmed. They grew up in Bangladesh and surveyed 200 women from their home country before they started work on the technology.
They hope to release the product in Bangladesh by 2024 and more widely after that.
The app has an emergency feature that sends a message and location to a trusted family member, friend or police. It can also record video and provide information for survivors about where to seek help.
The siblings recently won $30,000 at an international competition to continue developing their app.
"So the app actually asks the women certain questions like, 'Do you feel safe in your own home?' " said Anamika. "She can assess her risk in that relationship and at the end of the test a safety plan is provided."
The provincial coordinator with the Transition Houses Association of Nova Scotia said she's pleased to see this kind of technology being used to help survivors who are trapped in dangerous situations.
She can assess her risk in that relationship and at the end of the test a safety plan is provided.- Anamika Ahmed
Ann de Ste Croix said when it comes to partner violence, technology can be a double-edged sword. It's often used by abusers to further manipulate and control their partners.
Some abusers will track survivors' locations using their phones, monitor their devices or steal them altogether.
De Ste Croix said there appears to be more agencies turning to technology to reach women in abusive relationships, although she wasn't aware of any similar apps currently on the market in Canada.
"One of my primary concerns would be security and privacy and confidentially when downloading and using those apps, and I think that any effort to develop an app ... would certainly have to take that into consideration," she said.
Anamika said Mitro has a feature that encrypts information that's then stored to a secure server and can be deleted.
Listen to Information Morning's full interview with Anamika and Anik Ahmed here:
They say they were motivated to create the resource after witnessing the prevalence of intimate partner violence in Bangladesh.
"We ... have been seeing that in our environment, among our neighbours we don't see many happy faces. That's something we wanted to change," Anik said.
With files from CBC Radio's Information Morning